The River of No Return (14 page)

“We will take tour,” Arkady said, at exactly the same moment that Nick said, “No thank you, we don’t need a tour.”

Caroline looked back and forth between the two men. “Well, which is it? Tour or no tour?”

“Tour,” Arkady said, his voice implacable.

Nick sighed.

“The tour isn’t so bad,” Caroline said to him. “It will only be the two of you. Interest in the Second World War is declining, I’m afraid.”

The Second World War? But Nick breathed a sigh of relief when Caroline ushered them into the grand hallway. The graceful staircase remained but thankfully looked unlike itself, since it was flanked by glass cases filled with war memorabilia. Caroline began talking with exaggerated animation about the role the house had played as a nerve center of intelligence during the hostilities, and when she opened the tall doors that led to the formal rooms, Nick relaxed. The walls and moldings were all painted a sickly mint, in the thick, industrial paint common to the 1940s, and the rooms were laid out with a series of exhibits about spy activity, local involvement in the war effort, and the like.

Arkady and Nick listened politely as Caroline told of Churchill’s visit in 1942, of the time a German parachutist landed nearby and tried to burn the house but was caught and kept prisoner in the cellars, and of the annual reunions of the men and women who had worked there across those years, sadly dwindling in number now. Arkady asked a question or two about the neighboring Castle Dar: Had it been torn down before the war, or had the government used it, too? Nick couldn’t have cared less about the answers, and soon their voices were washing over him like so much meaningless chatter.

It was the rooms themselves that Nick was listening to now. They were whispering to him. Their proportions, the quality of the light, the intricately carved moldings, still beautiful beneath their layers of nasty paint, all begged him to recognize that he was home. While Caroline talked about how Castle Dar was pulled down for its stone and fittings in 1955, he looked over at the marble mantelpiece. One corner was still ever so slightly chipped from that time he played with his catapult indoors. He closed his eyes and felt the blood rushing to his head. Then a sharp pain as Arkady slowly and deliberately stepped on his foot. His eyes flew open. Caroline was talking about the techniques the government used to recruit spies. Nick stood on one foot and listened intently.

Caroline told them that, in the upstairs rooms, the National Trust had honored the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century history of the house, and even had a few objects that had been in the Falcott family at that time. “I don’t know if I can do this,” Nick whispered as they began to mount the stairs.

“You can.” Arkady put his hand on Nick’s shoulder. “You must accustom yourself.”

Nick let his hand trail along the banister as they mounted the stairs. At the top, beneath the dome painted with glowing clouds and pouting cherubim, was a glorious Palladian window, the centerpiece of the house’s whole design. Nick knew it showcased a view of Blackdown’s famous gardens sweeping down to the banks of the river Culm. Except that when he looked out, there were no gardens. The intricate series of interconnected beds had been cleared, and now there was a broad lawn that stretched unbroken right down to the river. In the exact middle of the lawn, his father’s Grecian folly, once overgrown with roses, stood out like a lonely tooth. But it had always stood off to the right. Whoever heard of sticking a folly in the dead center of a view?

Caroline came up behind him. “Beautiful, isn’t it?”

“Were . . .” Nick cleared his throat. “Were there gardens?”

“Oh, yes. Glorious gardens. But after the death of the last marchioness they went to wrack and ruin. When the house was requisitioned during the war, they plowed them under. Too easy a target for bombers, you see. And they painted camouflage on the roof. It’s still a little hard to find the house from the air,” she said proudly.

“I . . . see. Was the folly always there? I mean, was it always in that spot?”

“You are a garden buff! No, you are quite right. Drawings of the garden show that the folly stood somewhere over there.” She pointed to the right. “But they disassembled it during the war, because of the bombs. When the National Trust took over care of the property in the 1970s they found the stones over by the edge of the wood and put it back together again. I don’t know why they put it there. Perhaps to keep up the Palladian symmetry?”

“Mm.”

Arkady put his hand on Nick’s shoulder again. “Stop bothering Caroline with your hobby,” he said. “Let’s see the rest of the house.”

Caroline was affronted. “I am happy to answer all questions,” she assured Nick, turning her shoulder to Arkady. “If you are interested, there are drawings of the gardens in the pamphlet about the house. The last marquess’s young sister made watercolors of them sometime in the eighteen hundreds, and they are really quite evocative—though she painted them by moonlight, so they look more ominous than pretty. You can buy the pamphlet in the gift shop.”

Nick thanked her in a strangled voice.

“Let’s get on with it,” Arkady growled.

Caroline looked the Russian up and down with obvious disapproval. “As you wish,” she said stiffly.

Nick survived the next few minutes by keeping his eyes mostly on the floor and humming a marching tune under his breath. But when Caroline threw open the door to the marquess’s grand suite, announcing proudly that they were about to see Falcott House’s prized possession, his eyes were dragged upward by a force beyond his control. There it was. No bed, no furniture at all, but taking up almost one whole wall was the huge portrait of his family that used to hang in the drawing room in the Falcotts’ house in Berkeley Square. It had been painted soon after his father’s death, yet it included his father. The seventh marquess was in shadow, to symbolize that he was no longer living. He stood behind his wife. Her body was in shadow, too, but her lovely, grieving face emerged into sunlight. Both parents were gazing with sorrowful pride at Nicholas, Clare, and Arabella, who were shown in full sunlight, lounging smilingly around the Grecian folly, the girls plaiting roses into each other’s hair.

Nick stood before the picture, caught in the painted glances of his long-dead sisters. He barely heard Caroline as she spoke but tuned in when he heard his own name on her lips.

“. . . Nicholas, who was the eighth and last marquess, is the young man shown here. It is sad to think that just a few years later he would die in battle, and the title would die with him. You can see his signet ring prominently displayed. The father’s hand is in the same position as the son’s, do you see? But the ring is missing from his father’s hand. That and the red cap trimmed with white fur which Nicholas is holding shows that he is the new marquess—”

“Excuse me.” Nick heard his own voice as if from a great distance. “Where is the loo?”

Caroline looked at him with real concern. “Are you all right?”

“He’s fine,” Arkady said.

Caroline shot Arkady a look of loathing, which he returned full force.

“It is downstairs, through the gift shop,” she said to Nick. “We are nearly finished here, so we’ll meet you down there, shall we?”

“Yes, fine. Thank you.”

Nick practically ran downstairs, tearing the ring from his finger and stuffing it in his pocket as he went. He charged through the gift shop, which was in what used to be his study, paying no attention to the drab young woman behind the desk. He wrenched open the door to the bathroom and turned on the taps in the sink, splashing his face with cold water; it had worked when Kumiko had done it two weeks ago.

The assistant looked at him curiously as he walked back through the gift shop and out on to the drive, where Caroline and Arkady were waiting. Caroline put her hand on Nick’s arm, letting Arkady stride ahead toward their holiday flat. “I just wanted to say that it will be all right,” she said. “My husband is just the same as your Mr. Altukhov. A difficult man. But difficult men are sometimes secretly the kindest. Upstairs he told me all about how you lost your family and how you’d always wanted to see the original of that portrait, because the girls look so much like your sisters.” She peered into his face. “Yes, I can see it. I wonder if you are a distant relative.”

Nick stared at her blankly for a moment. Then a big smile split his face. It was all too absurd. “No relation,” he said. “But thank you. Thank you for your comforting words.”

He caught up with Arkady and put his arm around the older man’s shoulders. “Caroline likes you after all,” he said. “She thinks I should keep you.”

“I do not understand,” Arkady said. “You were miserable a moment ago and now you’re laughing.”

“Send me home, then.”

“You are home.” Arkady produced the key and proceeded to open the door to their flat. “We jump at dawn. It was not a good idea, spending a few days here in the future.”

“The present.”

Arkady held the door, allowing Nick to enter, then closed it behind them. “Tomorrow, my lord, this present that you love so much will be the far away future.”

A
rkady shook Nick awake an hour before the sun rose. He was as fussy as a valet over Nick’s outfit, and then as anxious as a girl over his own. But finally, when the first gray light was filtering through the windows, they were primped and ready in their unmentionables and Hessian boots, their tight jackets and starched cravats. They poked their beaver-hatted heads cautiously out of the door, then stepped into the early dawn like two nervous peacocks. No one was about.

“We stroll down to that bend in the drive,” Arkady said. “When we are far away enough from the house we jump, then stroll back. As if we are walking up from the main road.”

“It makes no sense,” Nick said. “We would drive up in a coach, or at least a phaeton.”

“We were dropped off by a traveling friend.”

“Without luggage?”

“We were robbed.”

“My family is not comprised of fools.”

“Your family will be glad to see you. They will not ask questions. And the truth? It is so outlandish that they will never guess it. Believe me, I have done this many times before.”

“And yet still you do not inspire confidence, Arkady.”

The Russian flicked dust from his sleeve and stuck his nose in the air. The twenty-first century was falling from him with each step he took. He looked every inch the elegant and slightly savage Russian count. It was impressive. Nick tried to follow suit and did manage to find his more upright nineteenth-century stride. The two men crunched along in silence for a minute.

“Arkady?”

“Mm.”

“You won’t abandon me there . . . here?”

Arkady glanced at Nick out of the corner of his eye, then stopped and put his hand on Nick’s shoulder. “I am your friend, Blackdown. I know you are frustrated that I do not teach you to jump, I do not teach you to freeze time. I only teach you to recognize time play. But believe me, it is for a reason that you are kept without these skills. It is perhaps more dangerous to have the skills. The Ofan can sense time play like we can. If they sensed you shifting time, they would know you were with the Guild. We need you to be clean, ready to infiltrate, to get close to them, to be inside.”

“How am I supposed to do that?”

Arkady grinned. “You are to use your . . . how do you say it? Your charmingness? The charmingness you have. The charmingness that makes you so good at what you do.”

“What I do?” Nick shrugged his shoulder free of Arkady’s grip. “I don’t do anything. I bum around New York seducing women and eating expensive meals. I help some farmers in Vermont. I enjoy myself.”

“Well. Even these little, lazy things. You do them with your charmingness.”

“You mean my charm,” Nick said. “And I’m not lazy. I work hard at enjoying myself.”

Arkady chuckled. “Yes, yes. You work hard. But you see, it is more than hard work we need. Any person can work hard. In 1815 you are Lord Blackdown, hero of the war. You are the rich marquess and you have this thing, this charmingness. And you have Falcott House. You are perfect, you see, for what we need. You are the only one.”

“What does Falcott House have to do with it?”

Arkady’s expression hardened. “Something is going on, near Falcott House and also in London. In Devon we need you to be the marquess, magically returned, but secretly on the alert: What are the Ofan doing down here? In London it is yet more important, what you are to do. You must be charming to the Ofan. Make them want you. You must pretend to join them.”

“I thought you wanted me to fight them.”

“Fighting, spying—it is the same. Do not worry. I will always be near you and I will be playing my part. When it is all over, I will bring you back again to this century.”

“And if I don’t want to come back?”

“You must come back.” Arkady’s voice was tinged with regret. “There is no choice. The Guild permits no one to be left behind. Even should you die. If you die, I will personally bring your body back to the twenty-first century. Like in that film, you have seen it, yes? It is the First World War, where the soldier goes into the no-man’s-land to get his friend’s broken body. I am your comrade, like that. The music swells and the guns are shooting, but still he goes forward for his friend—”

Nick held up a hand. “I haven’t seen that film.”

“But I didn’t tell you the title.”

“Nevertheless. I don’t like war movies.” Nick’s tone was abrupt. “I give you permission to leave my dead body in no-man’s-land, Arkady. Please.”

The Russian shrugged. “Never. I am your brother! But the point is not this foolish movie. The point is that you will come back.”

“Dead or alive.”

“Yes.”

Nick shivered in his stiff clothes and thought about his warm, living body underneath them: scarred, yes, but strong and still relatively young. He didn’t want to die for Arkady’s cause. He had jumped forward two centuries rather than die for England’s cause.
Cowardice. Treason.
Words he used to excoriate himself. Was this cowardice that he felt now, this reluctance to follow Arkady into the River of Time, into this war against the Ofan? Nick packed that thought away. This was no time for memories and no time for self-doubt. He was about to step lightly across an abyss that was centuries deep. He was about to go home.

They followed the bend in the drive, and the house was lost from sight. Arkady stopped and looked around. “Behind this tree,” he said. “In your time, would there be anything over there, a building where people might see us?”

“There might always be someone about. Scything the lawn, tending sheep, walking or riding across the land.”

“Hm. Perhaps we jump to nighttime.”

“It’s probably best. But not too late in the evening. I don’t want to wake my mother.” Nick laughed without humor. “That’s a sentence I never thought I’d say again.”

“You are about to say many things you never thought you’d say again. Do many things again.”

Nick didn’t reply. He was thinking about dark eyes, trying to stay calm.

“Now then,” Arkady said, stepping off the path and behind the tree, being careful not to get dirt on his shining black boots. “Are you ready?” He held out his hands. “Hold tightly.”

Nick gripped the Russian’s hands. “What am I supposed to do? Lie back and think of England?”

“No, you do nothing,” Arkady said, missing the joke. “I will think of England. You will come along with me as I think. You do not know in your conscious mind
how
to jump, but deep inside, in the heart of you, you know. I could not touch the shoulder of a Natural and drag him with me down through history. But you, you are already a time traveler.”

“Okay,” Nick said, dubious.

“Little priest. You must trust me.” Arkady’s smile was probably intended to be reassuring, but it was a trifle too wide; with his wild white hair sticking out from under his curly-brimmed beaver hat, he looked slightly manic, like Christopher Lloyd in
Back to the Future
, a film Nick had finally stopped renting after the girl in the video store started calling him “Marty McFly.” “When I reach out to the past, I will feel for it with my heart. I will sense it. When I have found the past in my heart, I will begin to pull myself back. You too will feel it, through my hands. Your heart will open to the feeling. It will come in like the flood. You will come along with me. Do you understand?”

Nick nodded, though really, they were probably both insane: two grown men dressed up like Mr. Darcy, holding hands behind a tree, trying to pull themselves by their heartstrings back to the long ago. Mad.

“Close your eyes, then, my friend. Yes, good.”

Immediately Julia Percy was there behind his eyelids, as if she were waiting for him. Closer than usual, emerging from the trees in her yellow dress . . . Nick felt a tug, then a sharp pull backward. It felt as if his stomach were trying to burst through his spine. He opened his mouth to breathe and found he couldn’t. Only the feeling of Arkady’s hands and the image of those dark eyes kept him from screaming. Then, abruptly, it was over. Before opening his eyes he breathed, and immediately he was weeping. The air was sweet, sweeter than any air he had breathed in ten years, and it smelled so powerfully of home that Nick began to sink to his knees.

“Goddamn it.” Arkady hauled him upright. “Do you want to ruin your trousers? Pull yourself together.” He shook Nick by the shoulders. “Now!”

Nick gasped and opened his eyes to a night so black he could hardly see Arkady beside him. He put out a hand to steady himself against the tree and stumbled as his hand fell through a foot of air; the tree was smaller. It was no longer winter; tiny new leaves were rustling in a slight, cool breeze. Plowed earth and freshly cut grass and wood smoke . . . He took a few deep breaths.

Arkady spoke more softly. “Are you all right?”

Nick nodded. “Yes. I’m sorry. The shock.”

“I must admit you have done better than most.” Arkady allowed some pride into his voice. “In fact, you have done the best. Most people completely break down. Except for me. Me, I jump back for the first time without a care. I arrive ready for my dinner.”

Nick could not be bothered with Arkady’s braggadocio, for through the shifting shadows he had caught sight of twinkling candlelight. Falcott House. Where his sisters and mother were probably sitting down to eat . . . he set off at a run.

“Wait!” He heard Arkady start out after him. “Do you want to break your leg?”

Nick didn’t care. The clean, rich air of home filled his lungs as he ran, leaving Arkady far behind. The gravel of the drive kicked up behind his heels. He vaulted up the stone steps and pounded on the door. “Mother! Clare! Arabella!”

The door opened to the butler’s shocked face.

Nick fell into the doorway, one arm gathering the little butler to his side in a strong embrace. “Winthrop, you old reprobate. Where is my mother?”

* * *

An hour later and a modicum of sanity was restored to Falcott House. It turned out that Mother and Arabella were in London for the Season, but Clare had flown into her brother’s arms and stayed there for a full fifteen minutes, crying and laughing and stroking him and calling him by all his childhood names, as servants emerged from every corner of the house to welcome Nick home. Arkady stood to one side and watched it all. Now the Russian was taking himself off to be settled in a guest bedroom. He had explained about their being robbed. Would it be possible to borrow a few things from Lord Blackdown’s wardrobe? Or had all his old clothes been discarded?

Nick’s mother had not cleared out his rooms after his “death”; his clothes were as he had left them several years ago, when he departed for the war. “Be sure to take all the very best things,” Clare said, laughing over her shoulder at Nick as Arkady bowed low over her hand.

“I will endeavor to please you, my lady,” the Russian said, straightening and keeping her hand in his.

Nick felt a rush of anger as he watched them flirt. He frowned, more at the feeling than because of it. The emotion felt so . . . antique.

Arkady went off to raid Nick’s dressing room, and Clare tucked her hand into the crook of Nick’s elbow. “I must have you to myself for at least three hours,” she said. “I want to hear all about your adventures.”

“And I want to hear about yours.”

“That will take two seconds,” she said. “During the winter I do nothing indoors, and during the summer I do nothing outdoors. And now my tale is done.”

“I don’t believe that.”

She smiled. “Nor should you. In truth I work very hard. Do you wish for some brandy or tea?”

Soon Nick found himself seated beside his elder sister on a delicate sofa in the little blue parlor. “I’m sure you could not get a good cup of tea in Spain,” she said, picking up the sugar tongs and getting ready to put a lump into his cup.

Nick held up his hand. “No sugar, please.”

Clare looked up. “Your tastes have changed.”

“Many things have changed in the years since I left for Spain.”

“Five years is a long time,” she said, “though the war has aged you more, Brother.” She pursed her lips as she looked at him, in that funny way she had that he had forgotten. She handed him his cup, her eyes on the scar across his eyebrow. “It must have been terrible, the war. And terrible to lose your memory.”

“It was.”

Clare stirred sugar into her own tea. “We grieved for you. There is a monument in the churchyard in Stoke Canon.”

“It will have to come down.” Nick was surprised to hear the resolution in his voice. And of course it shouldn’t come down—he was only going to disappear all over again when this task was done, and break her heart once more.

“Yes, tomorrow.” Clare smiled. “We will smash it to pieces, you and I.”

“You can wear a chip of it in a locket, to remember how I conquered death.”

“Arrogant! As if I would carry it around like a fragment of the one true cross.”

“I don’t see why not.”

Clare’s smile became a grin. “Of course, Mother must be informed that you are returned.”

“I shall send for her in the morning.”

“Yes . . .” Clare appeared to consider it, but Nick knew his sister and could see she had already come up with a plan. “It would be a shame to ruin Bella’s Season, though, wouldn’t it?”

Nick shrugged.

“Well, it would, even if you don’t realize it, man that you are. If Mother knew you were here she would pack Bella up in the space of an hour and kill three teams of horses in her rush to get to you. Best to simply inform her that, by the time she is reading our letter, we are already on our way to her. It will take me a few days—maybe four—to ready the house and myself for a trip to London. Will Count Lebedev be disappointed to turn around and return to London so quickly?”

Nick straightened his cuffs. “Lebedev will do as he is told.”

“Oh, will he, my lord?”

“Yes, he will.”

She beamed at him over the edge of her cup. He had missed her, deep in his marrow. “Clare,” he said.

“Do I look older to you?” She said it lightly, but he knew it was an important question. She was twenty-nine years old. Back in the twenty-first century, that was still considered young. Here and now, she was well past her youth. Her beautiful hair was bundled up beneath a frilly white cap: His sister was a spinster.